The shipping and cargo moving industry is continually faced with customer demands for new and improved vessel designs and for new and improved methods of modifying the design of existing vessels. Substantial cost savings can be realized by a vessel owner in modifying or rebuilding existing vessels to incorporate improvements in vessel designs or otherwise extend the life of the vessel rather than paying the cost of building a new vessel.
In addition, new governmental and environmental regulations place certain restrictions and requirements on vessel owners and operators. These new or required designs must be capable of securely holding a cargo and also of being seaworthy. At the same time, a vessel must comply with shipping and environmental requirements and regulations.
A typical vessel comprises a vessel having a single hull design. This type of hull construction provides a single outer hull or skin that provides structural integrity and acts as a boundary between the operating environment of the vessel (e.g., the sea) and the cargo and internal structure of the vessel. The single hull typically includes a shell having a bottom, a port side, a starboard side, a bow, a stern, and a plurality of transverse and longitudinal bulkheads and internal stiffening frames that support and strengthen the shell of the hull. This internal framing typically comprises a combination of transverse and longitudinal members.
As a result of the recent heightened environmental awareness and several shipping mishaps, new governmental regulations have been implemented requiring the use of double hulls on designated vessels in U.S. waters out to the 200 mile economic zone limit. These double hull requirements are contained in the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA-90) and have been incorporated in U.S. Coast Guard regulations. In part, OPA-90requires that all new tank vessels constructed under contracts awarded after 1990 must have double hulls and that all existing single hull vessels engaged in the marine transport of oil and petroleum products be rebuilt with double hulls or be retired between the years 1995 and 2015, depending on the size and age of the vessel.
This has created a great burden on carriers having existing single hull vessels. These single hull vessels will either have to be rebuilt to incorporate a double hull design at great cost to the carrier, or the vessel will have to be retired, in many cases years before the end of its economically useful life.
Double hull designs have been used in the construction of newer vessels in an effort to comply with the requirements of the OPA-90. These double hull vessels typically have an outer hull and an inner hull. The outer hull and the inner hull each have shell plating that forms the structural integrity of the hull. A combination of transverse and longitudinal framing is provided between the inner and the outer hull to help strengthen the shell plating. The idea behind a double hull is that the structural integrity of the outer hull may be breached without breaching the inner hull. Therefore, the outer hull may be breached, i.e., opened to the sea, while the cargo would remain securely contained within the inner hull. Thereby, a potential cargo spill will have been avoided. Typical cargos that have spilled in the past to cause environmental mishaps include cargos such as an oil, a petroleum, a chemical, or other hazardous materials. Of course the provision of a double hull adds to the complexity and cost of new construction. "METHOD AND DEVICE FOR THE INSTALLATION OF DOUBLE HULL PROTECTION", U.S. Pat. No. 5,218,919, issued on Jun. 15, 1993, Krulikowski et al. describes the construction of an auxiliary hull, exterior to the primary hull of a ship, which has the capacity to absorb impact energy preventing primary hull puncture, which may be retrofitted to existing single hull ships. However, this external fitting of a new auxiliary hull outside the existing single hull to form a double hull is costly and significantly changes the operational characteristics of the vessel. The breadth and draft of the ship are changed as a result of this external double hulling. This affects the ports that the vessel may access and the port interface characteristics of the vessel. Additionally, as is the case of a vessel with a pushing notch, an external double hulling will change the tugboat interface. External double hulling also affects the wave and wind characteristics of the vessel. In addition, the cargo carrying capabilities of the vessel may be affected, which in turn may affect the customers that may be serviced by a particular vessel.
Therefore a need exists for the rebuild of an existing single hull vessel with a new double hull. Preferably, this double hulling maintains the external shape and dimensions of the outer hull so that the vessel's hull performance and operational characteristics remain substantially the same.